It’s odd hearing another person talk critically about your work. By “critically” I don’t mean criticizing it necessarily but putting it under a lens and examining the parts, possibly in a way I never did. In the eight years since the original Little Fears’ release, I’ve heard and read a lot of different opinions about it. Folks came away from the game with their own ideas of what it was about, what it did right, what it did wrong, and whether it was a game they wanted to play.

Arnold Cassell talks on all these points in the latest episode of the RPG-focused podcast Canon Puncture. I balked some at the idea of listening to a 40 minute dissection of my very first game but I’m glad that’s exactly what I did. Arnold paints a very fair portrait of the game and certainly enlightened me to aspects and ideas within its pages that, if they were intentional, were the result of me outsmarting myself.

So, if you’re someone interested in the history of Little Fears or if you haven’t had a chance to read the original and wonder what it was all about back then, check out Canon Puncture 79: Game Advocates – Little Fears.